Into the Fire
by darkling59
Summary: Zoey is running for her life from a new-blood vampire when she encounters the best and worst thing imaginable: Jack Crowe's vampire slayers. And they're mighty interested in the young half-breed. V/VlM


**Title:** Into the Fire (& Out of the Frying Pan)  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Spoilers:** Both movies  
**Characters:** Zoey, Jack, some Derek  
**Archived:** ffnet  
**Disclaimer:** John Carpenter's Vampires, Vampires: los muertos, and all related characters, scenes, plotlines, etc. don't belong to me but the rest of this story does. Don't steal.  
**Warnings:** AU, crossover  
**Summary:**Zoey is running for her life from a new-blood vampire when she encounters the best and worst thing imaginable: Jack Crowe's vampire slayers. And they're mighty interested in the not-quite-vampire.

[**written mid-2009**; all comments and writing past this point are from an old plot bunny. It's also a rough draft so there are gaps.]

A vague thought has been plaguing me, stemming from vampires los Muertos and Vampires. How would Zoey act if she met Jack Crowe's team? Now, this isn't really what the idea has become. I don't remember a lot of Zoey's character beyond semantics and I never actually watched Vampires so I can't accurately judge Crowe's team.

* * *

Zoey ran for her life, keeping her hold on her possessions simply because she had forgotten to let them go. Her hoarse, rasping pants were the only sound disturbing the night air…to a human, at least. To Zoey, there was a slow thumping, like a war drum, gaining on her heels.

A vampire's heartbeat.

At a speed no human could match, the young half breed reached the crest of a hill and instantly took off down the other side, not bothering to look at the path ahead of her. The threat of death was enough to make small issues like where she was pale in comparison.

She almost passed the small hotel, so focused was she on her headlong dash. Thankfully, at the last moment, she noticed the building tucked away between two hills and directed her feet in its direction. Hopefully her pursuer would think twice before assaulting so many people.

Then again, Una hadn't.

She was at the door before any ethical worries could catch up to her feet and she shoved it open, not breaking her stride until she was forced to turn and slam down the old fashioned cross bar to lock it.

After a few seconds of focusing her senses on the door, searching in vain for any sign of her pursuer, she finally realized she was hearing much more than she should be. Too many heartbeats to name, probably too many to fit in the lobby.

Slowly, fearfully, she turned around and got her first glimpse of the actual room. It was a typical common area for a second rate hotel. The small living room contained well worn tables and chairs, with a few couches littering the walls and stained throw rugs on the floor. The strangest thing about it was that all of the furnishings appeared to be wooden.

And that it was full to the brim with silent humans, all staring at her with expressions ranging from anger and suspicion to amusement and lust.

And the entire room stank of vampires and death.

She had stumbled onto a team of slayers. And not Derek-style nice slayers, either.

"Uh…hi?"

--

Jack watched the strange youngster with irritation and slight, vicious amusement. She was pretty enough; if she wanted to interrupt their fun, they'd damn well make her a part of it. Most of his men had yet to take their hands off their concealed weapons but the hookers and prostitutes catering to the rowdy bunch were feigning indifference to the newcomer and returning to what they had been doing before.

He was all set to return to his whisky and leave the newcomer to fend for herself when she turned in his direction and he met her eyes for the first time. What he saw was familiar, dangerously so. It stopped him cold.

It was the primal fear of an animal being chased.

He was across the room in six long strides, grabbing her arm and slamming her against the wall. Her chest was heaving as she struggled to take in air and her muscles trembled with tension beneath his hands but he ignored her distress.

"What happened?"

His men laughed, jeering slightly as they assumed he had claimed her for himself. He mentally rolled his eyes and vowed to remind them how to read body language some time soon.

"I…he…" she was wheezing, hard, and could barely breathe through her gasps. Crowe growled warningly; he _hated _waiting; but knew he could not push her past her physical limitations."

"What?" His snarl seemed to help her recover slightly but she was still trembling in his grasp and would most likely collapse to the floor the second he released her.

"…I…he…fangs!"

"What?!" He lunged forward, glaring into her face.

"He…had fangs! Was chasing…!" He'd cast her aside before she could finish her second sentence, hardly noticing as she hit the wall and fell to the floor.

"Rubio! Tucson! Flanking maneuver!"

And just like that, his team came to life. There were a few groans of disappointment but adrenaline chased alcohol away, letting them respond to the surprise attack in seconds. Jack very nearly felt a stirring of pride at the sight. He had trained them well.

He stayed at the front door, bending his head close to listen for movement. James Rubio and Robert Tucson took up positions at the windows on either side, backed by two men standing further back, all of them wielding crossbows. The rest of the team, all twenty-three of them, scrambled around the room, setting up equipment and closing off doors and windows. The prostitutes were huddled in the center, looking bewildered but staying out of the way and the priest was advancing through the melee, apparently trying to reach Jack's side.

Before he could make it, the crew finished preparations and Jack, armed in one hand with a loaded crossbow and the other a loaded gun, pulled back the bar and let the door swing open slightly.

Nothing.

He nudged it open a little more.

Was it a false alarm? Had the girl been pulling their legs? There would be hell to pay if that was the case.

Then Rubio let off a shot and an inhuman scream rent the night air. Jack threw open the door, taking a mere moment to aim before loosing his ammunition: three lead slugs to the head, one crossbow bolt to the heart. He couldn't get a good look at the sucker in the darkness but it seemed to be staggering, badly injured. Rubio, who had reloaded, and Tucson released their arrows with deadly aim.

The vampire fell, still screeching and snarling but moving only feebly in its death throes. But without proper treatment, it wouldn't stay dead so Jack, flanked by his wingmen and their back up, stepped out into the night and drew his ax, driving it through the abomination's neck with little emotion or effort.

It was undoubtedly young, barely feral. The girl would probably only have been its fourth or fifth human kill. Despite its age, it was still insane and would have already lost everything that once made it human.

The priest finally made it to Jack's side and he heard the older man muttering prayers as the slayers finished examining the body.

"Light a fire. Burn it."

"Um…now?" Tucson had never dealt with a vampire at night before; policy was to confront the suckers during the day whenever possible.

"YES, now!"

He left the four men to their task, striding back into the room with the stature of a general addressing his troops.

"Any more movement? Are we fully blockaded?"

"No movement." Jules, by the window, had a pen periscope wedged outside of the blockade, keeping watch.

"Yeah, Jack, we're good." Sanchez, previously barricading the windows, was now eyeing the confused and scared women in the middle of the room. "We expecting any more suckers?"

Exactly what he had been thinking. He scanned the room, eyes coming to rest on the recent arrival who was sitting on the floor where Jack had thrown her, still panting and exhausted but restored enough to no longer be in danger of hyperventilating. Stepping in front of her, he nudged her roughly with his steel toed boot.

"Hey. Are there any more?"

She lifted her head and opened her eyes, gazing up at him blearily, expression questioning.

"Vampires. Are there any more vampires?"

"He was the only one chasing me." Her eyes slid shut and her head leaned backwards until it was resting against the wall.

Jack's eyebrows furrowed at her wording but he still gave the all clear to his men who dove back into the festivities with amazing fervor. The women were all too happy to do the same and return to familiar ground. The party atmosphere returned in five seconds flat.

"Jack, what happened?"

The priest stood at Crowe's shoulder. Having only recently arrived at the scene, he was understandably confused.

"You'll have to ask our guest here, father." He nudged the girl again but this time she simply moved her leg, not bothering to open her eyes or move her head.

"She brought the vampire?"

"Apparently it was chasing her."

"Through the desert at night? How on earth did that happen?"

"You heard the man." Jack squatted in front of her, talking directly into her face. "Care to share?"

One eye slitted open to glare at him. "I've been running for two hours straight. Can't I have some time to rest before you interrogate me?"

"Now there's an idea. Interrogation." Both eyes opened fully and Jack did not miss the flash of fear that passed over her face. "I need to know what happened and I need to know now. I won't put my crew in danger of an attack because you're _tired_."

"Okay." She sat up, shaking her head and apparently trying to muster enough energy to function. The mention of interrogation really seemed to spook her.

"I started…actually, I don't know where I started. It was a rest stop with a crummy little motel but I never learned what the stop was called. About two hours after sunset, I left my room to go buy food at the convenience store nearby and that guy ambushed me. He just jumped out of the darkness!"

"How did you escape?"

"I didn't. He missed. Instead of grabbing my arm, he brushed my sleeve. I yelled for help but he came at me too fast. All I could do was run. I ran as fast as I could until this place came into view. You were here for the rest."

"Hm." Jack settled back on his heels, deep in thought. Something about her story seriously bothered him, something about _her _bothered him too, and he would be suspicious until he knew what it was.

"So can I rest now?"

She was back to acting the weary traveler. After a moment's thought, Jack gave her a semblance of a smile that was really more of a sneer. He was still angry that she had disturbed their party.

"I guess that's fair."

Lighting fast, he snatched her up by the collar of her sweater and dragged her to her feet, marched her four steps to the nearest maintenance closet, then threw her inside and slammed the door, locking it with a chair wedged beneath the knob. She was too startled to struggle much and by the time she was aware of what was going on, it was too late. He heard her bang on the door a few times then shout through:

"Hey! What the hell?!"

"Fair's fair, kid."

"Fair?!"

He walked away on the rest of her tirade.

"Was that really necessary, Jack?"

_God save us all from the righteous. _He liked the father, really he did, but sometimes the man just could not understand the necessities of the trade.

"Yes, Father, it was."

"She's only a child."

"She was being chased by a vampire. For all we know, she could have been bitten."

"You think she ran that far with a vampire bite? Without bleeding?" The excuse sounded paltry even to Jack but something the priest had said dissipated his indignation in favor of foreboding. He had a feeling he had hit the nail on the head in figuring out why the girl was bothering him so much.

"Yeah, about that. How far is it to the nearest rest stop?"

"Must be…twenty, twenty five miles. Why?"

A bitter, unpleasant grin found its way to Jack's face. "She said that she ran that distance to get away from the vampire and that she left two hours after sundown."

"But that would mean…"

"If she was telling the truth, she ran twenty five miles in under two hours and stayed ahead of a starving vampire the entire time."

"She _outran _a vampire? But that's impossible!"

"For a human. Keep an eye on that door, Father, and let me know if she tries to get out."

He strode away while the priest was still stammering protests. If she was what he thought she was, they might all be in danger and his actions would be justified. If she was not…well, his actions would still be justified in the honor of protecting his men.

The first order of business was to set up guards at the door to make sure she didn't try anything. The next order was to assemble the tools he would need for the task at hand. And the third was the easiest…he just had to wait for the sun to rise.

--

Zoey pounded feebly at the door, knowing it was futile but feeling obligated to put up some kind of struggle.

After a few minutes of getting no response other than the oblivious laughter and chattering of the partying slayers, she gave the door one last thump with her fist then closed her eyes and let her forehead rest against the varnished wood with a tired sigh.

She wasn't really surprised by the senior slayer's behavior; there was good reason for him to be suspicious of strangers, especially strangers that led vampires to his doorstep. But he didn't have to be such a jerk about it!

For a moment, she seriously considered sitting down where she was standing, resting her aching muscles in the doorway, but that would be beyond dangerous. If he came back while she was out of it, she'd be unaware of him until he was directly on top of her.

With that thought in mind, she reluctantly pulled away from the door and turned towards the rest of the closet. It was a typical hotel janitorial closet, capable of holding four or five cleaning carts and containing deep shelves to hold bulk cleaning materials. Unfortunately for Zoey there were already three cleaning carts inside, taking up the majority of the space and leaving her a small patch of floor that was maybe 6x4 feet. She stumbled forward, using the shelves to help her to the wall where she gratefully collapsed into a sitting position. Once she was down she noticed a single unlit bare bulb hanging overhead but decided it was too much effort to get up and find the light switch. And, actually, the dim light was more soothing to her sensitive eyes.

A vague thought that the floor probably wasn't all that clean filtered through her mind but she was too tired to care. She unslung her bag from her shoulder and, using it as a pillow, settled down on the floor to sleep.

She would deal with her situation in the morning when she wasn't dog tired and could think more clearly.

--

INSERT INTERROGATION SCENE HERE

Important points

-sunlight

-Jack learns the truth (his men do not; the priest does)

-Zoey gets tied up and 'tested', sometimes passing but occasionally failing

--

Later the next day:

"So you're going to let me go?" she perked up, eagerly straining against her bonds.

Jack gave a harsh bark of laughter.

"Not on your life. Come on."

He grabbed her arm and pulled her outside into the bright sunlight where most of the slayers were packing the cars to leave. She balked at the threshold, trying to stop to let her eyes adjust. Crowe didn't even pause, just gave an extra hard tug that nearly pulled Zoey off her feet. She bit her lip against an instinctive snappy comment that would probably get her killed and followed him with her gaze trained on his jacket which was dark enough to minimize some of her discomfort.

He stopped her at a large crate, one of many that they used to hold their bulkier gear. It was not very wide, 2 feet tops, but very long, about six feet, and suitable for traditional vampire hunting weapons such as spears and axes as well as modern equipment like computers and infrared sensors.

She looked down into the empty box in confusion.

"What…?"

"I'm not letting those pretty little fangs of yours anywhere near me or my crew. Get in."

"You have GOT to be kidding."

He wasn't.

A rough push later and she was lying flat on her stomach in the crate, hands tied to together beneath her and something heavy on her back pinning her down, as the lid was slammed and locked overhead.

"F**k."

--

When Jack heard the click of the lock and the girl's muffled curse, he finally felt some of the tension in his shoulders ease. She was inhuman, unnatural. Killing her wouldn't be right since she wasn't strictly a vampire but letting her live didn't feel right either.

He shook his head with a disgusted snort, turning his attention back to his men and putting his captive out of his mind.

"Rodriguez!"

"Gear's done."

"Montoya, Tristan?"

"All set."

"Then let's get this show on the road!"

He stomped to the driver's side of the lead car and got inside next to the priest.

"Where's the girl?" For some reason, even after figuring out she wasn't human, the priest still felt bad for her.

"Oh, right."

He stuck his head out the window.

"Hey! Make sure to load that last box!" He watched until he saw two of his men lift the box and swing it up into the bed of one of the trucks, then lash it down so it wouldn't shift during the journey. Satisfied, he pulled his head back in and smirked at the father who responded with a recriminating twist of his mouth.

"You locked her in a box?"

"I wasn't about to let her near my men. Even YOU have to understand that."

"I suppose so."

He stuck his head out the window again, revving the car up as he did so.

"LET'S GO! KEEP UP OR GET LEFT BEHIND!"

The seven vehicles pulled out to follow Jack's dark brown Jeep. They were a motley crew composed of cars of all different makes, colors, and years, all big enough to handle several hundred pounds of cargo and some specially adapted to work well with the larger weapons. At the moment they were pretty empty with only about half the cargo space filled with equipment, most of it in crates like the one Jack had forced Zoey into; the excess of space was a side affect of not having a large mission for a while.

Once they were all set, Jack returned to his conversation with the priest.

"And it's not like she's being tortured. Vampires _like _small, dark spaces."

"She said she's not a vampire."

"You believe her?"

"Do you?"

He grumbled noncommittally, avoiding the probing stare. His companion waited a few minutes before continuing.

"Did you at least untie her first?"

"Her feet."

"Jack!"

"I'm not putting my men in danger, Father."

The seriousness in his voice must have touched a note because the priest nodded and subsided, apparently satisfied. A comfortable silence fell as they got under way and continued down the highway towards their next job.

--

The first thing Zoey did was try to measure the dimensions of her new prison, not an easy task with the as yet unknown heavy thing on her back. She'd gotten her hands out from underneath her and was cautiously raising her head to gauge the height when the box suddenly rocked violently, sending her crashing into the side with a startled grunt.

"You hear something?"

"Nope."

The voices were muffled but audible through the wood and she realized with a sense of resignation that she was being loaded.

In preparation, she braced her elbows and knees against the sides of the box and lowered her head so she wouldn't bang it. This proved to be a good choice because, seconds later, the two men lifted the box and her head spun with vertigo as they shifted grips and began to walk. It seemed like an even better choice when, without warning, the box jarred violently and stopped moving. Zoey stayed still for several seconds but the men did not lift the box up again. She heard a strange zipping noise, then the senior slayer yelling something in the background. In response, a motor roared to life underneath her and the surface she was resting on started to vibrate then lurched into motion. Even though she'd thought it was probably a car, she was still startled when the motion caused her to slide backward and her feet to hit the far end of her prison.

After a few minutes of getting used to the sensations of travel, she resumed her original activities. A little investigation proved that the heavy object on her back was the chain that had been used to bind her ankles during the interrogation and that the box was about three feet tall, leaving her enough space to stretch so long as she stayed lying down.

She shifted the chain off her back and out of the way then flipped over with an irritated sigh. She wasn't claustrophobic; being bitten had taken care of that; but being confined for so long didn't sit well with her.

Idly, she extended her fangs and began to chew on the rope around her wrists just for something to do.

They'd give her a chance to escape sooner or later; she'd just had to wait until then.

--

INSERT HOTEL SCENE

-arrival & quarters (Zoey's POV)

--

Jack watched his prisoner with a deep frown on his face. As a general rule, he did not feel sympathy or regret and he NEVER second guessed his actions. But something about the girl…she looked so small and defeated sitting in the corner, surrounded by huge men and chained up like an animal…

"What are you going to do with her, Jack?" That damn priest.

"I've made some calls. One way or another, she won't be my problem much longer."

"Jack…"

"It's done, Father." He does not tell the priest that it was Derek Bliss via the Hellsing Organization rather than the Vatican that he called because he's not entirely sure the Vatican won't show up anyways.

This Derek had better show up soon.

--

The next day, Zoey stuck close by his side, hardly seeming to notice the rope he wrapped around her wrists. At first, her strange behavior left him suspicious. Then he noticed her shrinking away from his men, watching them with scared eyes.

Suddenly, he knew what had happened.

He walked her out to the car, firmly but gently leading her by the arm. Instead of forcing her into the box, he walked her around to the side of the car furthest from the building and pushed her against the sun warmed metal.

"Look," he was surprised when she was the first person to break the silence. "I've already told you everything there is to know and I'm no use to you as a captive. Why won't you let me go?"

His expression settled into a grim line.

"You aren't human, kid."

"I'm more human than vampire. And I'm not a kid!"

"Too bad." He almost let his concern fade into amused anger but a glimpse of suppressed fear in her eyes stopped him. "What happened last night?"

She instantly broke eye contact, looking over his left shoulder with badly concealed embarrassment on her face.

"Nothing."

"SOMETHING happened." He gripped her arm a little harder. "Tell me."

"I don't-."

He used his free hand to roughly grab her chin and pull her eyes back to his.

"_Tell _me."

She opened her mouth but closed it without answering, trying to pull away. When he refused to let go, she began to struggle. Finally, she relaxed in defeat.

"It…really wasn't anything much."

"What was it?" he released her chin, sensing that she was ready to talk. Instantly, she broke eye contact and scuffed her feet in the dirt.

"Just…I think they were just having fun. Two or three of the guards from last night were talking about how they would kill me if I was fully vampire and that vampires, especially female vampires, don't have any rights. Then they began to question whether there was any humanity in me at all."

Jack was rigid and tight lipped with anger, forcing himself not to take it out on his helpless captive. Thankfully, her eyes were still trained on the ground so she didn't notice. The helplessness of the position made her look even younger than she actually was, intensifying the slayer's anger.

"Is that it?" somehow, the anger didn't show up in his voice.

"Pretty much."

"That isn't yes. What else?"

She didn't respond but one of her hands tried to move up towards her arm. It could have been a nervous habit but…

On instinct, he reached out and touched the spot. Her gasp of pain proved his theory correct and his anger blossomed tenfold.

"They _hit _you?"

She flinched away. "Not really. They just held me down sometimes while they were spouting idiocy about vampires."

"Hard enough to bruise?"

"Bruises don't heal like cuts do."

That answered his question to a disturbing degree.

"I'll take care of this."

"Huh?" she looked up at him and her honest confusion took him off guard. Did she really think he would let any of his men abuse a helpless woman, especially one that _he _was responsible for?

He was about to call her on it when the priest rounded the side of the truck and stopped dead at the sight of the two of them so close together.

"Jack?" The priest's tentative tone was almost worse than Zoey's confusion. HE thought Jack would abuse a captive?

"Hey Father. " On impulse, he pulled Zoey off the car and shoved her towards the other man. She gave a startled 'oomph!' when she hit his chest but the priest simply caught her by the shoulders and helped her regain her balance. In response to both of their quizzical looks, Jack scowled, mind firmly on what she had revealed about his men and his image.

"Get ready to go, Father. The half breed's riding up front today."

He turned around and headed for the hotel, mind set on punishing those who had defied him.

"Uh…thank you!"

Jack didn't vocally acknowledge the girl's somewhat startled yell but the end of his mouth twitched up in a semblance of a smile.

--

'Dealing with the problem' required ten minutes of shouting, five minutes of stony silence, and twenty minutes of making an example out of the responsible parties. Sometimes he felt like a parent. A half hour later, the team got ready to leave, two men shorter and a great deal more subdued.

Jack was in a foul mood when he slammed his way into his car, interrupting a conversation between the priest in the passenger seat and the girl in the back seat. Both of them looked ready to ask him questions but a single nasty glare convinced them to keep their mouths shut.

Today there was no cheerful shouting back and forth between cars, just sullen silence as the seven cars took to the road.

--

It was an hour before there was any movement in the car. Jack simmered in silence, the priest kept sending him concerned glances but stayed silent since there was someone else in the car, and the girl leaned against the passenger side window, listlessly watching the scenery and fiddling with the rope around her wrists.

She was the one who moved first by stretching her legs out across the seat.

Jack didn't even have to look in the backseat to know how she was now sitting.

"Seatbelts, kid."

"There aren't any. And I'm not a kid."

Startled at the comment, he checked the backseat, realizing for the first time that he'd never actually _used _seatbelts.

"JACK, _ROAD!_"

"Whoa!" Jerking forward, he barely swerved back into the correct lane and out of the path of an eighteen wheeler. Zoey yelped in surprise, nearly flung to the floor by the violent correction, and the priest clung to his chair with a white-knuckled death grip.

"Don't distract me while I'm driving!"

"What?!"

Jack pretended not to notice the priest shoot her a warning look over the back of his chair. Apparently she agreed with the sentiment.

"I mean, yeah, sure. Whatever."

And that was it for conversation.

--

When Derek heard his phone ringing at 9am on a Saturday morning, he answered it with a sharp comment on the tip of his tongue, fully prepared to chew Brody out for contacting him about a job on his self-imposed day off.

He was _not _prepared for the topic to be about something else altogether.

"Hey, did you ever work with a team that had a girl on it?"

Derek's eyes narrowed suspiciously. He hadn't told anyone about Zoey, for both of their sakes. If the Organization had found out he had worked with a half turned vampire, purposely injected her blood into his own veins, and kept residual abilities for a month afterward, termination would be the best possibility. More likely, he'd be 'blacklisted'; cut free then marked as a vampire in the records and pegged with a $7000 bounty.

Zoey would be marked with a $15000 bounty and declared free game for anyone interested.

"…Once."

"I thought you worked alone?"

"You remember Mexico?"

"Oh yeah! You know, you never really told me what happened on that trip…"

"It's 9am on a Saturday, Brody. What do you want?" Derek had an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach.

"Some bigwig old Vatican slayer, Jack Crowe, contacted the Organization last night and asked for you specifically. Sent a message that it was about a girl."

The uneasy feeling grew larger.

"That's it?"

"That and a location."

After writing the instructions down and hanging up on Brody's further questions, Derek stood in the middle of the room for a long moment, simply staring at the information. It had been almost a year since he'd seen Zoey last and he still felt remorse about what happened that last day. It wasn't like he could have prevented it but he shouldn't have let her get involved in the first place.

And if there was a slayer, a senior _Vatican _slayer, asking questions it meant that Zoey had been found and forced to talk, something she had refused to do even under threat of death from the powerful vampire master Una. If she had spilled her biggest secret, Derek most likely would never see her again. Most slayers would kill her without hesitation after learning about her 'dirty' blood.

But he owed it to her to at least find out what had happened.

He set the paper down and prepared to leave.

--

On the way to the given location, Derek did not dwell on Zoey's fate. He knew that, dead or alive, he could only deal with it once he got there. His biggest worry was that he would drive right past the meeting place.

When he got there, it proved to be irrelevant; seven huge cars in an otherwise deserted parking lot and loud laughing from the motel next door. Derek drove through the parking lot then pulled into the one next door, parking in the shadows. There was no way he was going to trust these potentially homicidal strangers with his only method of transportation.

He turned off the car, made sure it was concealed, then checked his weapons. Stake guns holstered on both hips, stakes fastened around his chest like a machine gun clip, and a mallet hidden beneath his jacket. Satisfied that they were present and well hidden, he turned wary eyes towards the building.

The first thing he noticed upon entering was that the room was appallingly badly guarded for a group of slayers. There were no guards, the room was noisy enough to drown out an elephant herd, and _none _of the men were paying attention to their surroundings.

A frown played at the edges of his mouth as he soundlessly closed the door behind him and skirted the room, staying inconspicuous and doing his best to both look confident, as if he belonged there, and fade into the back ground, as if he weren't worthy of notice. Judging by the group's appearance, he didn't need to bother staying low profile. In fact, he might have to shout just to find out which one of them was Jack Crowe and why he had summoned Derek.

He was halfway around the room, casing it and looking for any trace of Zoey or Crowe, before he noticed a priest standing by the bar, holding a Bible and shaking his head at the drunken debauchery. Derek nearly smirked at how out of place the older man looked. While amusing, the priest obviously was not the senior slayer so Derek allowed his eyes to wander on to the next man, sitting in a bar stool.

His eyes narrowed.

Out of all the men in the room, and there wasn't a single woman present, this was the only one who registered as a serious threat. He was slouched against the bar, nursing a half full shot glass and watching his surroundings with a smirk. The smile looked out of place on scarred features better suited to a grimace and, despite his relaxed posture, he exuded an aura of barely controlled aggression.

Jack Crowe. It had to be.

This was the man who had somehow gotten his hands on Zoey and forced information from her.

Derek's eyes hardened and his mouth turned down as he made his way, unnoticed, towards the other man.

--

"Jack Crowe."

The slayer froze, mind racing as he tried to comprehend the unfamiliar presence behind him and how whoever it was had managed to sneak up on him. Slowly and deliberately, he knocked back the rest of his drink and turned around, raking unconcerned eyes down the newcomer. Not one of his men, he realized instantly, too small and pretty. He was taller than Jack but thinner, skin tanned but unscarred. His clothes were a lose mix of surfer and biker with some 'badass' thrown in. Normally, Jack would have dismissed him as a wannabe but the stranger's eyes were serious and dangerously intense. Jack knew that look; it usually came before a calculated kill. Most of his men did not know it, they were impulse creatures, but he did. So did vampires. And murderers.

Jack stood up, resolved to take the issue seriously despite appearances. And how had he gotten in, anyways? There were fifteen slayers in the way of the door!

"Yeah, that's me."

"Where's Zoey?"

Understanding dawned and it felt like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

"You're Derek?"

"Derek Bliss." He did not extend his hand. "What did you do to her?"

"Jack Crowe. Come with me." He led the other man down the hallways towards the bedrooms. Derek was obviously suspicious, watching everything with careful eyes and staying focused despite ample distractions. It was a level of attention that very few, if any, of Jack's men would be able to exhibit any time, let alone so late at night.

He might look like a pretty boy but he was more skilled and experienced than any one of the slayers in the common area.

He was getting on Jack's nerves.

"Do you have a _problem_, Bliss?" And that just sounded wrong; the guy's last name was so…_sissy._

"Where is Zoey?"

Realization came like a thunderbolt and Jack almost cursed at himself for not seeing it earlier. He hadn't actually _explained _the situation in his message; Derek probably thought Zoey was dead and that Jack had called him out here to turn over the body. And why wouldn't he think that? It was what any of his men would have done. Hell, it was what he would have done before losing Montoya to Valek four years ago.

Jack stopped him at the door to a big, industrial sized linen closet, a room unto itself, and pulled out the manual key he had intimidated out of the hotel owner. Deciding what to do with her had been difficult this time around; he was uncomfortable with leaving her loose, could not lock her in a bedroom or private bathroom because then she could lock him out, and did not want to leave her chained up out in the open again because of what happened last night.

Before opening the door, Jack took another long, hard look at Derek who gazed back, face totally blank but eyes raging.

"Why do you care so much, Bliss? She's just some half-vampire mongrel."

"That's none of your business. Where. Is. She?" Derek's anger was beginning to override his common sense; if Jack waited a few more minutes, he'd have a fight on his hands. Instead, he shrugged indifferently and pulled the door open, gesturing Derek inside.

Cautiously, the other man stepped into the doorway.

"DEREK!!!"

Zoey flew across the room and grabbed him in a hug, knocking him back a few staggering steps with the force of her attack. Derek's mute surprise quickly turned to happiness and he returned the hug in an uncharacteristic show of emotion. Jack met Zoey's eyes for a second over her friend's shoulder and the gratitude in them made his mouth twitch up in a smirk.

"Not my responsibility anymore, kid."

Both of them turned to look at him as he turned back towards the party.

"Thank you."

It was Derek speaking but Jack did not turn around to answer; it was time to put this prickly business behind him. He returned to the common area and spent the rest of the night at the bar, alternately watching his men and regaling them with bloody stories about past hunts.

When he turned in for the night, they were gone.

**FIN**

* * *

Well, I'm glad that's over with. I don't know why I let it convince me that it was an obligation but I did and about halfway through the last scene I just wanted it to end.


End file.
